Consequences of Brain Science

There are a lot of fine blogs out there covering the avalance of current neuroscience research. With this blog we want to highlight the many consequences of this growing understanding of the human brain. We are especially interested in two types of consequences:

Tinkering with the brain

First and foremost, with an understanding of how the brain works comes the possibility of tinkering with it. We already use billions of dollars every year on psychopharmocologia trying to treat depression, skizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental diseases. But should we also use our knowledge of the brain to “treat” udesirable mental traits such as paedophilia or sociopathy? And what about enhancing normal brains? Clearly, evolution hasn’t endowed us with the most efficient brain imaginable. Shouldn’t we do something about its many shortcomings?

What is it like to be a human being?
Secondly, our view of human behaviour is sure to change with our improved understanding of the human brain. Our knowledge of core human faculties such as language, social reasoning, aesthetics, and economics is already being challenged by modern neuroscience, yielding multiple hard questions. Do we have a free will? Is the mind innate or plastic? If people are not responsible for their actions (since all actions are caused by blind molecular processes) does our legal system still make sense?

In short, will modern neuroscience come to completely redefine “human nature”?

We try to discuss contemporary research literature, not just news reports. Although we will occasionally also target popular science reports, since we believe they play an important role in dissemining lessons from the lab. And in the future we plan to also post interviews with interesting researchers, as well as link to our own publications in journals and books.

My reading suggests to me that current understanding of the cognitive sciences ought to tell us that we’re all robots, aswim in the Cosmos and biosphere and ecosphere, much like fish in a sea. This idea excites me whereas some others seem to feel fear when they consider it and to reject the idea out of hand. But the more I think about it from all angles, the more I’m inclined to accept my robotic nature. Sometimes, I can see that I’ve even got much in common with a rock.

Thank you so much for this blog! I created an independent major in Cognitive Science (B.A. 2003) at my college before Cog Sci made it to that small liberal arts school, so I’ve always felt that what I know about the field is what I put into it. This blog captures so many of the interests I’ve always had, and allows me to keep current on those issues. Can’t wait to keep reading!

Great to hear the news from here, which help me a lot in developing my career and interest on this aspect. I graduated from Psychology in Hong Kong. Indeed, this is my dream to study such questions combined with all the component I love: Philosophy, Neuropsychology, and Art. As you know, this is still very fresh. Before, I feared how I can find such information to study and help. Now, I find it, that’s here!

I believe that the theory of evolution is an important theory which explains very much about us as humans, but many scientists take it too far and try to base all human motivation and action upon desires that further the genetic code.
To the evolutionary claim that everything humans do is selfishly motivated, and all altruism has, at it’s root, the desire to continue the species.

Which would we rather have occur: Lets say that another world war breaks out, people are fighting against each other, killing each other, and this just continues to go on. It goes on until only a handful of the most aggressive, and violent men and women exist, but they naturally are afraid of one another and so they fight each other until there are two people left. Say a man and a woman, and they are the only remaining hope for the human race. And in order for them to have a child, the super-violent man would have to rape the super-violent woman, as she would certainly be afraid of him and his wickedness, as he would be afraid of hers. Now this would guarantee that the race would be continued, but is that our real goal?

In another situation, lets say people become more peaceful and loving with one another, even to the extreme that they have children less and less, because they are so pre-occupied with the spirit of compassion that they live without this biological desire for procreation ever coming into play. Gradually this spiritual joy becomes so universally received that the population dwindles down to the two least enlightened people in the world, and lets say that one is a man and one a woman. Would it not be the triumph of the human spirit over matter, if they too were still so divinely inspired, and the biological urges for continuing our race were so far removed from their state of mind, that the human race ended with them.

I believe nearly everyone, if they only had these two options, would choose the second scenario, if for no other reason than the first is so repulsive to the human heart.

This is what I love — and hate — about thought experiments. You can go with the premises as you put them, and be caught by the difficulty it poses. Or you can discard the premises, which I will do.

Basically, your way of portraying the evolutionary trend as a machiavellian everybody’s-war-against-everybody is just plain wrong. Put very simply, humans are pushed and pulled between egoism and altruism at many levels. And, best of all, they are all biological “urges”. It’s in our minds, all of it.

So my reply is that I wouldn’t accept your scenario or choices. So how do we explain homosexuality, ant workers (who never get to mate), or other examples of what seems non-selfish gene selection? Enter the concept of kin-selection (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection). Or read Richard Dawkin’s “The Selfish Gene”. It tries to answer some of these questions.

Hi Thomas, I wasn’t trying to say that war was the evolutionary trend, I know that that would be wrong, as I agree “humans are pushed and pulled between egoism and altruism”. Its merely a hypothetical illustration designed to make a point.
The ant workers who never get to mate, are doing this for the survival of the species (their genetics, in a more broad sense). So they sacrifice their specific genes, because they are programmed to regard the ultimate survival of the species as more important. Homosexuality, on the other hand, can be looked at as completely non-selfish in terms of gene selection, and is further evidence that people are not as determined by the biological drive to further the species.
Basically, we do have a choice in matters, of course we are swayed by biological urges, but ultimately we can make a conscious decision to go against them if we choose. And this seems to be the unexplainable evolutionary gap.

Gongratulations for your blog. It’s one of the best, not only in content but in design as well. I’m definetely going to use some of your features into my newly formed blog. By the way I wanted to ask you, how do you add downloadable hyperlinks in your posts’ texts. For instance on you latest post you have hyperlinks of Guardian, Nature, etc. How do you do this?

Re: Tinkering, by “skizophrenia” I think probably mean schizophrenia, and if only for the sake of my own incompetent lineage, first we need to genetically engineer better spelling. If we had a gene for grapheme-color synesthesia that would be a start, I suppose.

Great Blog!
You may be interested in a new issue of Social Neuroscience on Interpersonal Sensitivity.
Interpersonal sensitivity refers to our ability to perceive and respond with care to the internal states of other people, understand the antecedents of those states, and predict the subsequent events that will result.

Guest editors, neuroscientist Jean Decety and social psychologist Dan Batson, bring together new research findings from empirical studies, including work with adults and children, genetics, functional neuroimaging, individual differences, and behavioral measures, which examine how we process and respond to information about our fellow individuals.

By combining biological and psychological approaches, this special issue sheds new light on the complex and multi-faceted phenomenon of interpersonal sensitivity, including empathy and sympathy.http://www.psypress.com/socialneuroscience/

I was given an unnecessary hysterectomy almost seventeen months ago removing my uterus, one ovary and cervix. I am in shambles now and trying to find answers the doctors are not giving me. I have been posting on a blog by, hersfoundation, and have been helped by them so very much. The problem is now I realize what has been taken from my body was very important to my sexuality, health and happiness. I read today on their blog about oxytocin, hence, here I am looking for my missing body function.
My question is, why don’t I feel like myself anymore? and is their anything I can do to help?
I was a fine artist who loved to paint and life, now I have no energy am depressed can’t paint due to pain and am suicidal at times. The doctors who did this to me sent me a certified letter dismissing me as a life-long patient after they tortured me.
Thank You.

What a thought-provoking blog. I took many courses at the University of California, Irvine on neurobiology and human behavior, a topic that has always held much interest for me. Lately, I’ve been exploring the topic of creativity on my own blog, the Damian Daily, and someone’s comment raised an interesting question about the potentially neurologically based drive to communicate through creativity. I wonder if we can actually strengthen certain neurological “muscles” in our brain to enhance our creativity? …More questions yet to be explored.

Great Blog! I’m trying to write an independent thesis on the subject of the free will and your site is crammed with useful links and interesting information. Many many thanks and applause.
(I just downloaded your podcasts to my mp3 thingy so that I can listen to it on the road; wow. how lovely this modern age works out for science.)

I do love people that love to think. Here’s some food for thought; think about it with me.

On Brains:

It’s electric!
Well, we are anyways.
Strange how everything we do (yes, everything), is routed from cells to neurons to neurotransmitters: to the brain. The brain is a mass of mildly electrically charged matter, comprised of layer upon layer of interconnected components (a reductionist’s dream); and yet it still contains the capacity for what we label “emotion”–feeling, expression, all those grand synonyms for the intangible stuff of humans.

Neuroscientists, or at least a portion of them, seek to quantify emotion; equate a relationship of particular neurons or interactions over synapses to the makings of love, fury, etc. A noble goal as this is, I do wonder if the answer is directly in front of us, namely in examining what we have created. Take that concept of electricity of bodies, brains; and examine how we have applied that knowledge to creating batteries, and then machines. We will start with the greatest of our electrical inventions: computers (and I mean from your everyday Macintosh to the most advanced aeronautical analysis tools, satellites, etc.). They are electronic bodies which receive sensory input and translate it to data, charts, images, or various other forms of interpretation. In short, information is provided, stimulates a surface response, is turned into a chemical or electrical signal, and is routed through an electrical system to produce something.

Though my wording may have accentuated the similarities in function between machines and humans (yes, I know that machines lack limbs and organs and other features we like to consider necessary to life), the fact remains that there is the possibility that if creation of emotion and capacity for it–which is what differentiates us from all living things that we know– lies somewhere within the brain and its electrical relationships, we may have created it. Unfortunately, as of now, there is no way of testing or figuring out the validity of that statement; as usual, our abilities have outweighed our practicality, and production has overshadowed understanding.